Why keep score?

I recently took my daughter to an AFL match to watch her cousins play in the half time AusKick competition. After carving up not just the other team but also his own, Aiden had kick several goals, smothered everyone’s kicks and laid a million foe tackles, Sienna congratulated him on the win. He said they didn't win as they don't keep score. As the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, my daughter looked puzzlingly at me and asked why not? My explanation was a compromise of political correctness, as we all need to get a trophy, and indignation that the best team on the day should have be recognised for their efforts.

As in sport, business and life there are winners and losers.

Now I’m am not saying you need to be a winner every time, but if you’re not tracking your performance just how do you expect to improve?

Seth Godin in his book, Small is the new Big, talks about measuring everything so you can fix it. I could not agree more.

Over the last several years running arguably Australia’s largest and most successful independent brokerage where we measure over 80 different indicators every month, I can tell you as soon as we where off track we knew it and we knew it most importantly quickly.

Just like when the car engine light comes on, you want to know asap what’s wrong, you don't want to know just as the engine blows up. You want indictors, signals and feedback all of the time.

In Jason Fox’s book Game Changes he talks about the three key principles of Goals, Rules and Feedback. When he talks about feedback this is directly related to the need to understand ones performance, both lead and lag indicators.

So what do you measure in your business today and more importantly are they the right things to measure? You certainty don't need to measure 80 indicators but you can’t measure none.

Many brokers before I coach them have a few items they track, some keep an ‘eye on’ some metrics and some, well they don't really have a system to track performance at all.

I come from a world where the only surprise I like to get is breakfast in bed on fathers day. So why run your business just hoping for the best. Always looking in the rear view mirror wonder what just happened.

With all of the constant change and the whirlwind of your day, be kind to your yourself and start putting a spotlight on the areas of your business that you know need attention.

Great lag indicators (hindsight measures) you can track are;

·     Settlements

·     Net Promoter Score

·     Number of days the file took to move through the stages of your process

·     Profit (Revenue – costs)

·     Referrals (in and out)

·     Conversion rates from lead to appointment, appointment to application

·     Number of Approval in Principles you have and their conversion rates

·     Number of appointments (15 min, 30min and 1 hr. plus)

These are just a few of the lag indicators

Lead indicators are activities that you can do to affect the lag indictors such as;

·     Number of calls made to new clients

·     Marketing campaigns sent

·     Annual reviews completed

·     Number of referrals asked for or made

·     Posts or content sent on Socials

(To get the other 70 odd you’ll have to come to my Broker Essentials Course!)

So what measurements will you start tracking tomorrow? What can you put onto your visual dashboard to help keep you accountable to your actions? What can you do so that you don't get surprised by your results now? For more details on how you can to sustainably grow, scale and succeed with your business contact Jason at Broker Essentials to find out how.

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